SAM, THE FREEWAY ISN´T A CATTLE TRAIL ANYMORE

﻿﻿Q﻿&﻿A﻿﻿

﻿Q. What are the major themes of your work?﻿﻿A.﻿Ancestries and their reason for coming to The Valley of the Sun. Stories of family life in the rural area. Also changes of farm and livestock practices as well as changes before, during and after The Great Depression and World War II in the first one half of the twenty century.

﻿Q. How do you get started with writing a story (as in, how do you start developing the stores, how do you get inspired?)A.﻿My Mother’s family in
West Virginia recorded many stories of early time in their area, including
stories of fighting Indians, being abducted and taken into captivity. There was
nothing written about my Grandpa Cy Joy and his family. He developed a huge
cattle ranch in Nebraska and the only stories told of him and his family life
were by my Aunt Alice, which lived to be 100 years old. I wish my Grandfather
or someone had written about his life and times. About this time, I started making note of the stories I heard from my folks, Aunts and Uncles and other persons so these stories could be written down and passed on to my kids and grandkids.

﻿Q. If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your book?A.﻿ I
won’t change but add more stories that were remembered and told after the book was published.

﻿Q. Do you have a specific writing style?A.﻿ All stories are written down as if heard at a family gathering or around a campfire in the language used to tell stories in those times.

﻿Q. Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? A.To find the words to more actually describe places, people and things seen, smelled, heard and felt at the time.

﻿Q. Is there a message in your book that you want reader to grasp?A.﻿The simple thing in
life itself was exciting, giving meaning to the saying, “stop and smell the
flowers.”﻿Q. What are your expectations for the book? A. ﻿1.To keep the stories as true
to the facts as possible.2. Get the
stories to pass on to family, our kids,
grandkids.3. Make these stories
available to historian and persons interested in history of those times. A forth expectation, not anticipated, was to figure out how to pay for the expense in preparation, writing and publishing the book.

﻿Q. Did you ever think you’d ever become an author?A.﻿No. To put is simply, this is what a high school class mate said when she saw my book, “I never thought a jock like you could or would ever produce something like this.” ﻿Q. What advice would you give to people who “run out of creativity” when writing?A. ﻿Write things that are outside of the box and make them fit into the box. That will put you back into the creative frame of mind business.﻿Q. What are your current projects?A.I am now writing about my personal experience venturing into an area, some might say was
one of Arizona’s last frontiers. I’m writing about the history and
development of the area, including Mohave Indian Lore, developing desert into an irrigated farm miles from
any neighbor with no television or phones and keeping sidewinders from making
their home under the farm house.